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Saturday, 4 March 2017

Chronicles Of A Middle-Aged Vampire - PART 2

I started to cry. I have never been a weepy sort of woman, but this had been a very stressful evening for me. My husband of more than thirty years was leaving me, I was going to lose my home, what I had taken for a delightful erotic dream had been abuse - a man "seducing" me by mistake - and that weirdo was siting on my bed crying in regret.

"Please!" he cried, "You must believe me! I had no desire to..."
I started giggling through my snotty tears. The story of my mediocre life seemed to have reached a climax, and it was a pathetic farce, to say the least. I was 55 and a man was sitting on my bed confessing that he had "no desire" for me. His eager erection had been a case of mistaken identity...

I finally grasped the phone and punched in that magic code of salvation "112". The man gasped- "Wait! I must explain!"
A voice answered and I screamed "RAPE! Help me! Hep!"
Surprisingly, the man made no move to rip the phone away, to strike me or to stop me. He got up and backed out of the room wringing those pale hands. "Please, stay home today, I will be back to explain the changes. Stay home. Please! You will be a great danger..."

A howl of sirens and a screech of tires announced the miraculously speedy arrival of the coppers and he ran to the landing and vanished from my sight.

An hour later I was sitting on a hospital bed in a paper gown having been submitted to a humiliating examination by a scrawny kid-doctor who reeked of Clearasil. The policewoman who sat with me kept patting my hand and saying "There now, there now..."

I couldn't wait for this to be over, so I could go home, take a shower and wash away that awful yesterday - every last second and hour.

It was ten by the time they dropped me off. It had taken four hellish hours to process my complaint, and that misty dawn had birthed a miserable muggy day. One good thing, there had been no actual penetration, so that particular violation I had been spared - but I told the Police about his veiled threat that "I would be in great danger" so they sent me home in a unit with a policeman to search my house, and see if it was safe.

I was so tired. I could not remember feeling this tired before.Ever. I watched impatiently as the officer walked through the house, stumbling upstairs in his wake.

"All clear, Ma'm. I'll close the door on my way out. You call us at any sign of trouble, OK?"

I nodded dumbly and listen for the click of the latch. From long habit I walked into my conjugal bedroom and fell onto the bed. In seconds I was fast asleep.

I slept like the dead, and woke to chaos. Frank was opening and shutting drawers, flinging clothes into a gaping suitcase in the middle of the floor. My drawers, my clothes.

"What...what are you doing?"

"Get up you lazy bitch!" he snarled.

"Frank?"

"I want you out! Take your shit: go to your mother, or your brother, but get out."

I started to feel peeved. "You can't do that. It's my house too."

Frank grinned. I had discovered over the years that his grin was as ugly as his smile was charming. "Stay if you like. But I am bringing my fiancé to live with me. Tonight."

My slow anger stirred. "You can't do that!"

"Yes I can." That ugly grin again, like a snarl. "I can and I am."
He opened the closet and started pulling out my dresses. "Don't you want to know who you will be sharing your home with?"

A stirring of foreboding: "No!"

"No? We've been having it on for fifteen years, Greta. We don't even hide it much anymore. I'm sure you must know. How dumb can you be?"

"Please Frank, don't say something you will regret."

He started to laugh. Frank's laugh was as ugly as his grin. "ReGreta! That's what we call you: my big fat saggy-tit ReGreta!"

A wave of rage blasted through my stomach and up into my brain. "Stop! STOP!" He didn't, which is why the blame for his untimely demise can be laid firmly at his door.

"Rosa and I," I corrected him automatically, and then that flower of rage exploded into a vision of Rosa. Vapid, porcelain-pretty Rosa who had so despised my "low-class" husband and his crude ways, derided my hunger for a small and peaceful life. I saw Rosa with her pink mouth opening into a delighted "oh" under Frank's thrusts, her manicured nails clawing at his hairy back, winding her thin cellulite-free thighs around his heavy hips. Rosa.

The agony of trust betrayed, love soured, belief soiled, ripped through the anger. I knew, I suddenly knew that half their pleasure had derived from imagining my pain. "Why?" I screamed, "WHY?"
Then scarlet blinded me, deafened me, took me down into darkness.

I came back to myself and utter silence. I was standing in the middle of my bedroom, and at my feet sprawled Frank. He was on his back with his mouth wide open and a thin silver string of saliva hanging down his chin. His eyes were wide and surprised, his neck ripped. It looked like a scene from those CSI shows I liked to watch when I thought he was in the pub every night drinking with the boys.

It was exactly like one of the shows, except that it smelled and there was no blood. Frank had pissed his pants. There was a dark stain on the front of his trousers and by the sickly smell, he'd defecated too. His deep wound showed raw red flesh and whitish strands twisting though what I supposed was the yellowy fat of his jowls, but no blood spattered the floor, pooled on the carpet.

There was a strange and unfamiliar tang on my tongue - coppery, thick and rich. Like undercooked blood pudding. It tasted rather good.

It suddenly occurred to me that this detachment signalled madness. My husband was dead and here I was standing, coldly analysing the vivid sensations washing over me.

I stepped over him and walked into the bathroom. I stood in front of the mirror and saw that there was a wide stain around my mouth, like I'd been making out in blood-red lipstick. There was blood on my teeth too. I must have killed Frank in my blind rage, tore into his neck like a rabid dog. My knees failed me and I sat down heavily on the toilet. I cradled my head in my hands, and felt a sloshing heaviness in my belly.

I had killed Frank. I had become a murderess. The words of my attacker sounded clear as a bell: "You will BE a great danger..."

THAT is what he had said. Not "You will be IN great danger..." I was a danger, I myself. He was right and the proof of it lay in the bedroom, on my grandmother's pink and pearl Aubusson rug.

The absent disjointed though flitted through my head, that thankfully Frank hadn't ruined my priceless heirloom with his blood.